A year ago, in March, 2013, I wrote a gun control article here for the Huffington Post, "The Good Thing We Can Learn From Anti-Abortion States." It stemmed from news stories about red states where abortion was totally legal, yet laws were being enacted to make it difficult to get those legal abortions, to the point of near impossible. With zoning laws, or laws affecting medical licensing or code requirements, abortions might be legal, but you couldn't get them.
"I realized that there's a lesson that can be learned here," I wrote, " -- not about abortions, but another issue that's just as divisive. And using those lessons, it would be possible to start making a dent in a problem that the vast majority of Americans are now saying they want addressed." What I suggested, somewhat facetiously, was that gun control advocates could try to get similar laws passed. Owning guns was legal, but you could make selling those guns (and bullets) so restrictive that it would effectively block the sales of guns. My suggestions started small, but then went way over the top, which was the facetious part (and some misguided folks chided me for them...) -- but the point was serious. Little did I know that Chicago, of all places, decided to actually do something similar. They haven't gone as far, but still -- they've gotten the concept right. Some of the new laws are similar to those passed in New York City, where a limited study showed that gun crimes they sold dropped 85%, This all came about after a city ban on gun stores was ruled unconstitutional, but rather than fight the decision, Chicago and Mayor Rahm Emmanuel decided instead to put in restrictions, which have to approved by July 14. As the Chicago Sun-Times reported here -- "Under the proposed ordinance, special-use zoning would keep gun stores out of 99.5 percent of Chicago, limiting them to pockets of the North, West and South sides, city officials said. The stores could not be within 500 feet of a school or park. "Store owners would have to conduct quarterly audits of their gun sales and allow police to inspect their records. They also would have to get the police to approve a security plan before they could open their doors." But it goes much farther than that. Some of which, I was shocked to see, I even joked about doing in my article, in the less quipping parts. As the paper writes -- "Chicago’s proposed ordinance would require gun stores to submit a safety plan outlining exterior lighting, surveillance cameras and alarm systems, as well as storage of guns and ammunition. "Employees would have to undergo fingerprinting, background checks and training on identifying potential gun traffickers. "The stores would have to maintain a log of gun sales in which a firearm was later recovered in a crime. That would help employees identify potential gun traffickers if they tried to buy more guns, according to the city. "Emanuel is proposing that Chicago gun stores could sell only one handgun a month to a buyer. If the city revoked a store’s business license for violating the ordinance, it could not reopen at the same location for three years, officials said." This is indeed the "red state block legal abortion" blueprint. Leave gun-selling legal, but make it difficult to sell them. The thing is...much as pro-gun zealots would bristle at the concept, these new ordinances seem to make sense if public safety for a legal, but potentially dangerous product is your concern. You can buy guns -- you just have to be very, very safe about it. As you should be about guns. And pro-gun zealots regularly talk about how people should be safe with guns. “'There is no question it will be the smartest, toughest regulation on gun stores in the country,' said Janey Rountree, the mayor’s deputy chief of staff for public safety. 'It’s designed to prevent gun trafficking and illegal sales in these stores.'” Alderman Walter Bennett Jr. told CBS newsradio station WBBM, “This is just letting everyone know that we here in the city of Chicago are very serious about gun trafficking going on in the city of Chicago. So we want to make sure if a person is proposing to do some gun trafficking here, we want to limit them as much as possible.” The Good Thing We Can Learn From Anti-Abortion States. Go figure. It actually seems to work. My kind of town, indeed.
0 Comments
Fans of Foyle's War edition.
On Craig Ferguson’s show tonight (Wednesday evening/Thursday morning), one of his guests is Honeysuckle Weeks. This will mean nothing to people who've never watched the brilliant British mystery series, Foyle's War, but to those who have, she'll be instantly recognizable as the beloved "Sam." That's CBS at 12:30 AM in Los Angeles and on the East Coast. 11:30 PM in Chicago. I have no idea why she's a guest on the Ferguson show, even if she's in a movie about to be released. The only other thing I can think of is that the last two times I’ve seen his show the past few weeks he’s been talking about discovering reruns of Foyle's War and raving about it. He’s done it humorously, but I get the sense that he really likes the show. (And deservedly so.) So, maybe it’s connected to that. If you've never seen Foyle's War -- which came to attention on PBS Masterpiece Mystery -- it's richly worth checking it out on DVD. I always describe the series not as a mystery, but a drama about live in WWII England in which a murder happens to take place. It about life in a small, coastal town in England, where the police chief, Foyle (underplayed with brilliance by Michael Kitchen, who can do more with a twitch of his lips than most actors can do with a soliloquy) wants to participate in the war effort, but is told that he is more need to help keep the domestic piece. Samantha is in the army, but brought in to to be the driver for Foyle, who doesn't drive. The series was off for a few years, but then returned last year, updated to post-war England. It's just great. Craig Ferguson's praise is not hyperbole. I just don't know what took him so long to discover it. Okay, so you've seen James Cagney as George M. Cohan. And we've now seen Joel Grey as George M. Cohan. Here's an odd concept -- how's about seeing...George M. Cohan? Cohan, of course, had a legendary Broadway career as a songwriter, actor, director, and producer (and according to historians, not a particularly nice guy at all, despite Cagney's portrayal), creating such classic songs as "You're a Grand Old Flag," "I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy," "Over There," "Mary, "Harrigan" and countless others. But few people have ever actually seen him. Well, here he is. This is from a 1932 movie late in his career, co-starring with my fave Jimmy Durante, in a picture called, Someone Ought to Wave the Flag. And you not only get a scene with George M. Cohan here -- you get a musical number with him, singing (and even a couple of small dance steps towards the end)! And for good measure, Jimmy Durante gets a long solo later in the number. Mind you, I can't say that this scene will convince anyone why George M. Cohan was legendary, but it's at least wonderful to have some footage. By the way, fine, detailed-minded reader Dough Molitor reminds me that this movie was also known by it's better name, The Phantom President. I wasn't aware that this was one in the same. The score to The Phantom President is by Rodgers & Hart. And Cohan did not get along with them at all, which is putting it mildly, in large part likely because their popularity greatly had eclipsed his and marked a change in Broadway. He regularly referred to them derisively as "Gilbert & Sullivan." Yet despite this, he went on to star in their subsequent Broadway show, I'd Rather Be Right, which was a respectable hit and brought Cohan back to the limelight. But before that, there was this -- I mentioned that I'd post some more pictures from my day at the Art Institute of Chicago. This is one that should be quite familiar particularly to those fans of musicals and in particular Stephen Sondheim. This is the original "A Sunday on La Grande Jatte" by Georges Seurat on which Sondheim based his musical, Sunday in the Park with George. (Some references call the painting, "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte," but we'll go with what the Art Institute says.) No reproduction of the painting can really do this justice. It's not just the size, but mainly the "pointilism" that Seurat created, making the work virtually a collection of dots. Standing up close, just a few feet away (the guard at the right politely asked me to step back, even though I was outside the rope at the bottom) and seeing the the meticulous, painstaking detail and the colors blending into one another is quite remarkable. But this painting in the same room I found particularly interesting. It's a significantly smaller, earlier study of the same subject that Seurat did. At first glance it looks very similar, but when you take a closer look, you can see the changes he made. The three people in the lower right, for instance, are totally different in the final painting, the whimsical monkey on a leash is nowhere to be seen in the study. Lots of other changes, as well.
We reads the headlines so's you don't have have to.
After being out of town for a month, it takes a while to catch up and get back to speed. So, I don't have it in me yet to read many news stories, and I especially don't have it in me to read the story that come close to making my head explode. So, it goes without saying I'm not able yet to go into depth discussing those that I do read. However, I figured that I can at least note the headlines of some of the stories that made me glaze over, and give you immediate reactions without even getting into what the story is -- because for some of these, I think my weary, exhausted head would explode if I got that far. Joe the Plumber: "Your Dead Kids Don't Trump My Constitutional Rights" No, I wasn't terribly concerned or interested in what "Joe the Plumber" said. I mean, honestly, he's "Joe the Plumber." Mainly, I just never realized that a person's 15 minutes of fame could last this long. Maybe my watch stopped. I'll have to check. Cliven Bundy Ditches the GOP Given that these are the days of high school proms, I think it's only appropriate that Mr. Bundy continues the fine, craven tradition of not leaving the party with you brought you. "Fox News" must be especially pissed off, since they probably figured that this was a guy who could groom for president, and now they've wasted all that air time promoting him. Gov. Rick Scott Won't Say If He Believes In Man-Made Climate Change: 'I'm Not A Scientist' No word yet on whether non-scientist Gov. Scott (R-FL) believes in gravity and whether or not the earth revolves around the sun. That and electricity, the possibility of telephonic communication, airplane travel, and the effectiveness of heart surgery, Not being a scientist can make life so confusing. But then...that's why we have scientists... Fox News Guest Issues Lame Apology I don't know what the guest was supposed to be apologizing for, and I sense that this headline was intended to be critical. But to me, I found it a real shocker and deeply positive. After all, when was the last time you read about anyone of "Fox News" apologizing about anything. "Lame" is great, when you compare it to non-existent. Dem Who Compared Obama To Hitler Loses Primary I have to admit, I was tempted to read this story. I wanted to find out if the candidate got any votes. (Left out of the headline is that there was an accompanying photo, and the Democratic candidate was black. I don't know who the candidate's campaign manager was, but I'm guessing that the person is boning up on the concept of "damage control" for the next election. Pakistani Woman Stoned To Death For Marrying The Man She Loves There is no truth to the rumor that the corporate-own NRA issued a statement that it's too soon to be discussing whether or not there should be a law against stoning women. Since I posted a video of Joel Grey starring as George M. Cohan in George M!, I thought it would be nice to see this interesting 2-1/2 minute video of him looking back on the production, for which he won the Tony Award as best actor in a musical, and talking about the issues with the show and the challenges for him. And here's a selection for the Original Broadway Cast recording of the show. Especially since I just posted the video of Joel Grey singing a medley of some of George M. Cohan's greatest hits, I thought it would be nice to have one of Cohan's lesser-known songs, but a good one. This is "My Town." By the way, if -- as Joel Grey says above -- the production indeed did face the hurdle of audiences thinking the show was just a patriotic pageant, rather than a thoughtful look at a talented, influential but troubled man, to a certain degree they have themselves to blame. Here's the logo for the show.
(On the other hand, it might have been the thought of patriotism that drew some audiences, as well...) |
AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
Categories
All
|
© Copyright Robert J. Elisberg 2024
|